Drew Karpyshyn - Retribution

The blood mingled with the sweat of his exertion, making a warm, sticky mess that quickly covered his arms and dripped onto the seat and the floor around it. Kai Leng was oblivious, however; all his attention was focused on working the rope against the metal fittings of the chair, fraying it one woven nylon strand at a time.

It took nearly five minutes, but in the end the wear and tear caused one of the loops securing his left arm to snap. The others quickly went slack as he wriggled his arm, until they were loose enough for him to slide his crimson-soaked limb loose.

He attacked the knots holding his right arm in place, the fingers of his left hand slick with blood and sweat. It was frustrating work, but after another minute he managed to free his dominant hand. Then he set to work on the ropes around his legs and ankles.

The angle was awkward; he had to lean forward and down to reach under his seat. Unable to see what he was doing, he had to stop every twenty or thirty seconds to keep the blood rushing to his head from causing him to black out. In the end it took him longer to free his legs than it had his arms, but ultimately he was free.

Breathing heavily from the exertion, he stood up slowly. His legs had fallen asleep from being held in the same position for so long. Gritting his teeth and clutching the bloody copilot’s chair for support, he gingerly walked it off, doing everything he could to get the blood circulating again.

When the pins and needles finally faded, Kai Leng headed for the first-aid kit in the back of the shuttle.

He wiped away the blood with a sanitized towel, then smeared a layer of soothing medi-gel on the gashed and torn flesh of his burning forearms.

Then he paused to consider his next course of action. One option was to simply close the airlock and fly away, leaving Anderson and Sanders to try and deal with Grayson. This seemed to be the most sensible thing to do; he had no weapon and it was likely everyone on the station would be as much against him as they were against Grayson.

But he knew that would displease the Illusive Man. There was a good chance Grayson would escape.

Once he left the Academy, he would be virtually impossible to find … especially if he killed Sanders before fleeing.

The more Kai Leng thought about it, the more he realized this might be the last chance Cerberus would have to stop the Reapers. And even if it meant confronting Grayson unarmed, he couldn’t let the opportunity slip from his fingers.

With his mind made up, he didn’t waste any more time. Moving quickly, he passed through the docking ramp and airlocks and into what was obviously a security clearance room.

Two bodies lay on the floor: one male, one female. A quick inspection revealed they had been killed with a knife. The fact that Grayson hadn’t simply crushed them with some type of biotic power gave Kai Leng hope; it could mean his enemy was exhausted and possibly even vulnerable.

He felt the familiar spark of excitement flickering deep inside him. At heart he was a killer, a predator.

He lived for the chase. And the hunt was about to begin.

The Reapers were being cautious. Methodical. There was no need to hurry, so they didn’t.

Eager to avoid unnecessary confrontations, they set Grayson off on a winding, circuitous route through the halls of the Academy, using the schematics they had downloaded from the guard station. It was night on the station, so they chose a route that passed by empty offices rather than dorm rooms where students would be sleeping.

With the blanket still wrapped tightly around his body, Grayson was nothing more than a passenger along for the ride. He was grateful their route kept them from running into anyone else, however. He didn’t want to imagine what would happen if one of the students happened to stumble across them.

Eventually they reached the door of the Ascension Project’s primary research laboratory. The door was closed, but the Reapers knew that the data archives for the entire project were stored in the room beyond.

They had Grayson lean forward and press his ear against the portal. Through the door and the blanket,

his hypersensitive hearing picked up voices coming from the other side. Scientists working late, most likely.

They let the bloodstained blanket fall to the floor, then hit the panel to open the door. It slid back to reveal what was quite clearly a research lab. A bank of computer stations lined one wall. The opposite wall contained shelves of biological samples taken from the students to monitor their health and progress.

In the back corner were various pieces of expensive equipment used to analyze the samples, as well as the electronic data collected weekly from the implants of every child in the program.

Two men and a woman occupied the room. One of the men was seated at a computer station, his chair turned away from the screens as he conversed with the other man and the woman. She was smiling knowingly, as if she’d just made a joke; the two men were laughing out loud.

All three turned in Grayson’s direction as he came in. Their expressions transformed from laughter to fear, though it was impossible to say whether the cause was Grayson’s mutated appearance or the twin pistols he carried.

The Reapers fired three shots in rapid succession. Each bullet was perfectly placed in the exact center of the forehead, causing instantaneous death. The three researchers fell to the floor, their lives forfeit simply because they had chosen this particular night to put in a few hours of overtime.

Standing perfectly still, the Reapers listened for the sound of any response to the three pistol shots that had echoed in the room. There were no cries of alarm from down the hall; there were no sounds of running footsteps. Satisfied that the obstacles had been eliminated without alerting anyone else on the station, the Reapers turned and casually hit the panel to close the door.

In the back of the lab was another door; beyond it were the data archives. The archives consisted of an OSD library and server array that contained every reading and every result from every test on every student who had ever participated in the Ascension Project.

Not surprisingly, the door to the data archives was locked. Access to the information was restricted to only a handful of senior staff on the project, and required a keycard, access code, and biological identification confirmed via voice and retinal scans. It took the Reapers less than two minutes to hack the door open.

Once inside, the Reapers began to access the data using the lone terminal in the room. As the information flickered on the screen, Grayson scanned it, processed it, and transmitted it instantaneously back to his Reaper overlords in dark space.

The sensation was unlike anything Grayson had ever experienced. It was exhilarating. Intoxicating.

Euphoric. Even a red sand high couldn’t compare with the rush of being a conduit for pure data transmission.

But it was also taxing. Draining. Exhausting. Transmitting trillions of terabytes of data required a tremendous output of energy, and the Reapers knew their avatar was already weak. So they went slowly, taking their time, careful not to destroy their precious vessel.

“We’ve got an emergency,” Kahlee said as she burst into the guard station closest to the security clearance room, slightly out of breath from running the entire way.

“Three of you come with me. The other two go alert the other guard stations and put the whole Academy on stage-four lockdown.”

Hendel Mitra, the former security chief at the Grissom Academy, had been a close personal friend of Kahlee’s. His successor, Captain Ellen Jimenez, was a capable replacement, but Kahlee and she had never formed the same close, personal bond. Fortunately, she still respected Kahlee enough not to question her when she burst into the guard station and started barking out orders to the staff.